Caesar had been cut off without supplies or reinforcements and had lured Pompey into the mountains, where his own access would be restricted. Pompey had friends in Greece and was still happy to wait Caesar out in such a harsh environment, but the senators in his camp wanted a quicker, more glorious victory.
Separated from his legions in Spam, Pompey had fled to Greece to raise another army. After decimating his old ally's forces in the west, Caesar followed him east.
Unlike Pompey, Caesar had no allies in Greece. He was outnumbered, and any reinforcements and supplies had been cut off. It was by sheer force of will that his army managed to keep up their campaign, but Caesar knew he was fast running out of time. He needed an even playing field and marched away from the sea and into the mountains, hoping Pompey would follow.
Pompey, meanwhile, had been buoyed by a major victory over Caesar's forces at Dyrrachium, but he was pained by the fact he could have beaten his enemy once and for all if he had pressed on. Once he caught up near Pharsalus, Pompey attempted to starve Caesar out, while Caesar in return wanted to coax him into open battle. The two sat at stalemate until Pompey's impatient senators told him they wanted victory now.
Despite holding the higher ground, the better supplies and the far superior numbers, Pompey used a tactic that Caesar knew all too well. While attempting to outflank Caesar's forces, Pompey did not see that his opponent had created a hidden fourth line of infantry. The flanking cavalry charged but did not anticipate the savage counterattack that followed. As instructed, Caesar's troops stabbed up at the cavalry with their javelins, terrifying Pompey's young aristocratic commanders who were unused to such a fierce tactic. The cavalry retreated and this fourth line gave chase, followed by the fresh third line. Pompey's forces were crushed and the general himself fled to Egypt. The decisive battle of the Caesar's Civil War had been won.
Delivered a stunningly decisive victory against overwhelming odds (looked at in more detail in the boxout). Once again, Pompey was in the wind.
As Pompey fled south to Egypt, Caesar returned to Rome to pronounce himself dictator, but resigned after just 11 days before picking up the chase once again. However, if he expected a fight, he wasn't going to get one. Pompey had been betrayed by the very people he had sought sanctuary from, and his corpse was presented to Caesar by the child pharaoh Ptolemy XIII as a tribute. They didn't get the reaction they were expecting. Caesar was reduced to tears and ordered the execution of those who had slain his enemy. The final obstacle to his absolute power had been removed.
Looking out on the Nile, Caesar was able to see what such power could mean. He fell for Cleopatra after she reportedly smuggled herself into his rooms wrapped in a carpet and, acting out of sympathy for her and his own anger about the execution of Pompey, he fought with her against her brother Ptolemy in the Egyptian Civil War.
The fighting that ensued was known as the Siege of Alexandria, during which Ptolemy refused Caesar's offers of peace and paid the ultimate price, drowning during the Battle of the Nile. The Egyptian queen claimed to have had a son named Caesarion with her lover, but he would never acknowledge that the boy was his. Once Cleopatra was firmly established on the throne of Egypt, Caesar sailed to Asia Minor to quash a rebellion led by Pharnaces. His victory was so swift that it led to his famous boast ”Veni, vidi, vici." The words ”I came, I saw, I conquered" weren't specific to this single battle. Caesar was unstoppable.
Even as he celebrated victory, Caesar knew he had spent too long abroad and needed to establish and maintain his power in Rome. It was vital that power be absolute, but gave the appearance of not being so. He was elected as Rome's dictator in 48 BCE for a term of one year. He spent this time mopping up the final resistance to his rule, including Pompey's sons in Spain and the elusive Cato in Utica, Tunisia. The hunt for the latter would take Caesar to North Africa, where he would defeat the troops of Scipio and offer them no mercy. In a final act of defiance, Cato took his own life rather than face an empire under Caesar's sole rule.
The Senate rewarded Caesar's triumphs by appointing him dictator for ten years. With Pompey's supporters disposed of, Caesar returned to Rome to reform the empire. His plan was threefold. He needed to ensure that there was no military resistance to him; he needed to deal with the serious debt that Rome had accumulated during its years at war; and he needed to turn the empire from a collection of states into one nation. Between 48 BCE and his assassination in 44,
Caesar would show himself to be far more than a military dictator, not only laying the foundations for but taking the first decisive steps towards making the Roman Empire what it would become. The 60-odd men who conspired against and assassinated him in the Senate on 15 March 44 BCE may have succeeded in their task, but Caesar's legacy had long since been assured.
Caesar the dictator
Throughout his regime, Caesar had used the approval of the people to his advantage. When he returned to Rome having defeated Pompey, Caesar knew it was crucial to keep the people onside. Mistakes were made along the way though. When he celebrated his win over Pompey's son in Spain, it was seen as a serious faux-pas as such festivities were reserved for victories over foreign foes, not the sons of former consuls.
His political reforms, however, addressed some of the major concerns many had aired. He understood that, if Rome was to truly be an empire, it could no longer hold back the benefits of living under Roman rule from those living outside Italy. With this in mind, he opened up citizenship to those living in Gaul, and encouraged people to relocate to the empire's territories. He reduced debt and he ensured that soldiers who had fought for him would have land to settle on. He also introduced the new calendar, aligning the months with the solar year rather than the Moon.
To ensure opposition against him in the Senate was minimal, Caesar expanded their ranks. Each position was now open to more candidates, making the aristocratic elite that opposed him less of a majority. Although he wore the purple robes of a king, sat on a throne in the Senate and had his face on the empire's coins, Caesar was careful to keep up appearances that he was a duly elected official. The ease with which his loyal general Mark Antony was able to step into power and pursue those who had assassinated Caesar shows the level of popularity the late ruler had maintained during his years as Rome's dictator.
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Alexander the Great
At the head of the world's most feared fighting force, Alexander the Great took for himself a vast empire through the sword, and has been called a hero,
Tyrant and a god
The king died quickly, his white robes soaked red. The laughter and rejoicing of a royal marriage - the wedding of his daughter - had quickly turned to screams and wails of lament as Pausanias, a member of the king's personal guard, turned on his master, driving a dagger between his ribs. Tripping on a vine as he fled the scene for his getaway horse, the assassin was brutally stabbed to death by the furious spears of pursuing guards. Philip II died as he had lived: awash with blood and surrounded by intrigue. His legacy would leave bloody footprints across the whole of Central Asia and the Middle East.
Over a 23-year reign from 359 to 336 BCE, the king of Macedon - a mountainous land overlapping modern northern Greece, Albania, Bulgaria and Macedonia - had gone from ruler of a barbarous backwater of tribal highlanders to the overlord of the fractious Greek kingdoms and city-states. Bringing his rival monarchs in line through war, military alliance and marriage, Philip II had reformed the Macedonian army into one of the most feared fighting forces in the ancient world, with a view to bloodying their most hated foes, the Achaemenid Empire of Persia, which had humbled and humiliated the Greeks in the Greco-Persian Wars a century earlier. Aged just 20, Alexander III of Macedon - soon to be remembered as Alexander the Great - took the throne as the head of a military machine on the brink of war and legendary status, and gleefully drove it full throttle over the edge.
Alexander had been groomed for greatness from birth, but he was no pampered prince. Tutored by the austere Leonidas, who forbade all luxury, the general Lysimachus and the philosopher Aristotle, Alexander was proficient with weapons, horse riding and playing the lyre, and an expert in ethics, philosophy and the skills of debate. He trained daily in pankration, an Ancient Greek martial art, which focused on savage grapples, punches, kicks and choke holds. A Renaissance man before the Renaissance, he was schooled in the skills to conquer and the knowledge to rule. At 16 he had governed Macedon as regent while his father warred far from home, the young heir putting down rebellious tribes in Thrace and founding a whole new city, Alexandropolis - the first of many that would bear his name.
Like so many civilisations before and after them, the Ancient Greeks loved to gossip. Philip's death, they said, was an act of revenge from his scorned lover Pausanias, but two other people immediately benefited: Olympias, mother of Alexander and once-favoured wife of Philip, had been in danger of losing her status to a younger bride; and Alexander himself, who promptly executed all
“He trained in pankration - an Ancient
Art, which focused on es, punches and kicks”
Other contenders for the crown and crushed rebellions across Greece. Olympias, too, set about consolidating her power, having Cleopatra Eurydice, her replacement as consort to the dead king, and her baby daughter burned alive.
The dubious heroes of myth were Alexander's own blueprint for greatness. With legendary figures on both sides of the family tree, it was hard not to be convinced of his own special destiny. His father's bloodline claimed descent from Hercules - the son of Zeus and bull-wrestling demigod of Twelve Labours fame - while his mother's family looked up to Achilles, the all-but-invulnerable champion of the fabled Siege of Troy. Omens and portents prefigured every decision, but as much as this ambitious new king gave every appearance of being a slave to destiny - looking for meaning in flights of birds and consulting oracles at every turn - he steered destiny himself, consciously building a legend that would lift his accomplishments well beyond those of his father and into the same world of the legendary journeys and heroic battles that had once inspired him.
In just shy of a decade, he crushed the life out of the once-mighty Persian state and expanded the borders of his domain from Libya to India to create a mighty empire.
Fittingly, this conquest began with some mythical brand management. Picking up where Philip Il's army of invasion had been poised, Alexander crossed the Dardanelles - the narrow channel connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, and Europe from Asia Minor - in early 334 BCE with 47000 soldiers
Greek martia savage grapp
And mercenaries from across Macedon and the Greek kingdoms. Leaping from his warship in full ceremonial armour, vast plumed helmet and golden breastplate, the emperor-to-be sent a spear whistling through the air to crash into the undefended soil of Asia Minor. It was the first blow in a war that would claim for Alexander over
200.000 square miles of land and leave between
75.000 and 200,000 dead.
The coastline of what is now Turkey was littered with Greek cities ruled by the Persian invaders, and of them Troy had particular significance for Alexander. The alleged site of his maternal ancestor Achilles' most celebrated victory and tragic death, Alexander carried with him on his journey the story of the Trojan War, Homer's epic Iliad (a gift from his tutor Aristotle), and quoted from it often. First, he had the tomb of Achilles opened so he could pay tribute, then riding to a nearby temple of Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom, the Macedon king was shown what they claimed were the weapons of Achilles. There, he took down a shield, replacing it with his own. Alexander wasn't merely content sharing a fanciful familial association with Achilles; he wanted to rival him, visiting this site of bloodshed and heroism, and taking the mantle of one of Ancient Greece's greatest heroes.
Was it a propaganda stunt that spurred on his army, or did he believe it? His fierce pragmatism and ambition would suggest both - a dangerous and unpredictable combination that made him one of the battlefield's most iconic generals.
First meeting the Persians in battle in 334 BCE, Alexander quickly established a formula for swift and decisive victory at the Battle of the Granicus, just outside of his beloved Troy. Leading from the front ranks, a feint drew the stronger Persian units and their battle-hardened Greek mercenaries out, spreading their line thin and allowing Alexander's cavalry to hammer through their scattered ranks. He was welcomed as a liberator by the Greek subjects of Asia Minor, and endeavoured to win over the local population too. Claiming to distrust tyrants, he appointed local rulers and allowed them relative independence, but with a new centralised tax system he ensured their autonomy was reliant upon his handouts.
With Persia's control of the vast expanse of Asia Minor resting on its superior navy, Alexander opted to scatter his own vessels rather than fight a sea war he couldn't win, and marched down the coast to take the enemy's largest naval port, Halicarnassus - now Bodrum in Turkey - by land, forcing his way through the walls until the Persians
Alexander the Great
Battle Of The Granicus (334 BCE)
Alexander's first victory against the Persian Empire
The first real clash between Persian troops and Alexander's newly minted invasion force remains the best example of his signature battle tactic.
Using heavy cavalry to prise apart the weakest part of the enemy line while his finely drilled infantry kept the bulk of the enemy tangled up on their spears, it relied upon the professionalism of Macedon's army, as well as the unique talents of its core units.
It showed that Alexander knew how best to use the forces that his father had amassed.
World History
